-Our next guests are actors you know best
from television's iconic series "The Sopranos."
Their new book, "Woke Up This Morning,"
is out now, and new episodes of their podcast,
"Talking Sopranos," are released Mondays
across all podcast platforms and on YouTube.
Please welcome to the show
Steve Schirripa and Michael Imperioli.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
-Thanks very having us. -Thanks for having us, pal.
-You know, there's this interesting thing happening,
which is, you know, "Sopranos"
is the most popular show on television.
It was such a part of the zeitgeist when it aired,
and now it's having this whole second moment, it feels like.
Not just your podcast and the book,
"Many Saints of Newark" is out now.
And I feel like the one thing people forget
who are watching now is,
it was the biggest deal in New York City,
this show, when it was on TV.
And you guys were, like, the biggest celebrities in the city.
You were -- the "New York Post" covered you everywhere you went.
And I'm wondering, do the actual wiseguys
ever reach out to you and tell you what
they thought about the show? [ Laughter ]
-Well, I lived in Little Italy on Mulberry Street
for a couple of seasons, right?
So it was a Monday morning.
The show had aired Sunday night. And I got my dirty laundry.
I'm going down to the dry-cleaners.
And I'm walking down the block, a guy stops me, Rocky.
He goes, "Hey, Steve, Steve, come here.
Look, you know I love the show, right?
But anybody who ever whacked anyone,
that's not how you do it." [ Laughter ]
I said, "Okay, Rock, I gotta get going."
[ Laughter ]
-I had a similar experience at Rao's where there was
an attempted actual mob hit that --
like, there was a stabbing -- or, a shooting in there.
I wasn't there that night, thank God, but --
I was there with Tony Sirico and Vinny Pastore.
We were at a table, and the other table
was a captain in one of the famil--
I think maybe the Colombo family.
Don't quote me on that.
But Tony knew the guy, and the guy comes over and said,
"You know, I can show you the real way
how to strangle someone with piano wire."
[ Laughter ]
And luckily, he waited till dessert to kind of, um...
[ Laughter ]
...tell us that, but I thought that was --
-And then Jim -- didn't Jim get a crazy call one night?
-Gandolfini got a call in the middle of the night,
anonymous call. He never figured out who it was.
He answers the phone, and the guy says,
"Listen, we like what you're doing.
Doing a really good job, but know one thing.
A don never wears shorts." Click.
[ Laughter and applause ] That was that.
That's true. He never figured out who it --
-I just love -- I like to think that there's
a family meeting where they're like,
"Somebody's got to make a phone call."
[ Laughter ]
"We can't have people thinking dons wear shorts."
[ Laughter ] -"Makes us look bad."
-"They're gonna give the mob a bad name."
You know, one of the things about the show is, you know,
you're all -- you know, you all became,
you know, so well-known from this show.
And people forget that a lot of you
weren't well-known at all when this show was cast.
I mean, James Gandolfini was relatively unknown,
and I guess Lorraine Bracco was maybe the most famous person,
because she had been in "Goodfellas."
-She had been nominated for "Goodfellas,"
for an Academy Award, and then --
and Jim had been working, and Edie Falco,
and they were all working actors, Michael was working.
But listen, Uncle Junior, Dominic Chianese?
69 years old when he gets the show.
He's sleeping in a La-Z-Boy,
living in a studio apartment above a restaurant.
[ Laughter ] -Wow.
-Tony Sirico -- Paulie Walnuts --
he's living on his mother's cot, 55 years old.
You know, I had a full-time job.
I was an entertainment director in Las Vegas.
And I came here for a wedding.
You know, I had been acting a little bit.
Came for a wedding, auditioned,
and I got the job.
And the first year, I had to fly myself out, put myself up.
It cost me $24,000 to make $22,000.
[ Laughter ]
-Your agent chipped in 5% of the difference, though.
-Yeah, yeah, my agent told me --
Believe it or not, my agent said, "Don't take the job.
They're not gonna take care of you."
He is no longer my agent, obviously.
[ Laughter ]
-You guys, you know, one of the reasons behind
starting the podcast was, it started to occur to you,
based on interactions, that people were re-engaging
with the show all these years later,
that you had fans that maybe weren't even born yet
or were certainly too young for the show
when it first started airing.
-Yeah, in 2019, I was shooting a pilot in Central Park.
And this kid walks up to me from Scotland, he was like 20,
and he lifts up his pant leg,
and there's a tattoo of me on his calf.
[ Laughter ]
I was like, "What? What is that about?"
And, apparently, there's a lot of people
that have gotten "Soprano" tattoos on their body --
-How many people have a tattoo of Michael Imperioli?
[ Laughter ] Anybody?
-And then, you know, just like two days ago,
I got tagged on Instagram from tons of people
dressed up as me and Adriana for Halloween,
which was pretty wild.
All different types of people, all different sizes.
-Yeah. -Ethnicity.
And, you know, nobody's shy about being a Soprano.
-And so the podcast almost got derailed by the pandemic, right?
The original plans of getting the two of you guys together.
-Yeah, you know, the reason we started the podcast --
So, we got approached to do one.
We knew all these younger people were watching the show,
and there was a lot of "Soprano" podcasts out there with --
from people who had nothing to do with the show.
So we're going, "Well, what the hell do they know?"
[ Laughter ] You know?
"Let's do a podcast. We were there, right?"
So we did all this press, and we were getting ready
to start, and then the pandemic hit.
And then I said, like, "I mean, who really gives a [bleep]
about a TV show?" you know? [ Laughter ]
The world's coming to an end, and we're going to --
Who cares about Paulie Walnuts, right? So...
And then, we started hearing from people.
You know, "We're waiting for this.
We're bingeing. We're locked in the house
23 hours a day," as we were. Depressed as hell.
And we found Zoom somehow, and...
[ Laughter ]
...we did it. -Yeah.
That was another rule of the mob was never use Zoom.
-Don't use Zoom. [ Laughter ]
-Never wear shorts, don't ever do it on Zoom.
And, you guys, one of the things you do on the podcast,
you interview people who were on the show.
And you've also been rewatching it.
Do you have unique memories of watching it as it aired?
Was that something you'd do?
Would you watch it on Sunday night with the rest of us?
-I would watch it, yeah, with my wife on a Sunday night
if I was home, you know?
The only time we watched it together,
we were in Florida at the Hard Rock for the finale.
Right? And it was nine of us.
-The main cast. -Yeah, the main cast,
nine of us. Drank champagne.
And even though I knew it was gonna fade to black,
I was, like, stunned. I had -- I hated it.
I said, "What the hell is this?" And Michael loved it.
Jim didn't know what the hell was going on.
Nobody knew what was going on.
And that was the only time that we watched it together.
Otherwise, just watched it on Sundays, you know?
-That night I was -- I did an improv show that night.
It was my job to tape it,
and then everybody came back to my apartment.
And when it went to black, every single person looked at me
thinking that I had not taped it long enough.
[ Laughter ]
And, like, the greatest relief of my life
was when the first credit came up on screen.
I'm like, "Son -- Oh, my God." -Everybody.
-You know, there's a really good story
that involves this building, kind of,
connected to "The Sopranos." About 20 years ago,
some nut sent anthrax to 30 Rockefeller Center.
-Yeah, I was working here. -Okay.
So, Tony Sirico, played Paulie Walnuts,
figures he's next on the list,
'cause if you want to bring down Western civilization,
you got Brian Williams and then Paulie Walnuts.
-Totally. [ Laughter ]
-So he figures out -- he gets his assistant
to go to the mailbox with rubber gloves,
brings him in the house,
and puts his mail in the microwave,
and zaps it for like 30 minutes, figuring somehow...
-That will stop the anthrax. -That'll neutralize it.
I didn't -- I never knew that that was effective.
-I don't think it is. [ Laughter ]
-Well, what it did do, the mail went up in flames.
[ Laughter ]
But he didn't get anthrax'd. He survived.
-So they know, Paulie Walnuts is the guy with the wings.
-Yeah. -And him and Grandpa Munster
are the only two people in the world with that hairdo.
[ Laughter ]
It never took off like the Elvis or the Rachel.
-No, no, nobody was getting -- nobody went in to their stylist
and was like, "Give me a Paulie," yeah.
[ Laughter ]
Were you guys -- because, you know, part of the joy
of the podcast is the two of you obviously get along very well.
You have a very nice rapport.
Were you fast friends when you first met on the show?
Did you get along right away?
-We're not fast friends now. -Okay.
[ Laughter ] -We were friends for a while,
and then the podcast kind of ended that.
-Kind of went like this. Whoa!
-Yeah, sure. Flattened the curve, yeah.
-Listen, Seth, I've known you quite a while now, right?
-Yeah. -First day on the set,
my first day, I'm excited.
First day, I wasn't even a full-time actor.
They say, "Steve, meet Michael Imperioli."
He gave me the fish hand.
You know, like, the "pay no mind list."
Like he went, "Yeah, how you doing?
Yeah, how you doing?" [ Laughter ]
-You just said you weren't a full-time actor.
How am I supposed to treat you?
-The guy's aloof. He hi-hatted me.
He big-timed me, you know? -Yep.
-And he's still doing it to this day, I'll be honest.
-He was showing off, handing out --
-Nothing has changed! -He was handing out
business cards from the Riviera, he goes,
"I'm the V.P. of the Riviera." [ Laughter ]
He claimed to have invented pai gow poker,
which I didn't believe. [ Laughter ]
He's -- you know, he's full of [bleep]
-This is the deal. Michael's a Buddhist.
He meditates. He doesn't eat meat.
He doesn't drink. I do everything opposite.
[ Laughter ]
Everything he does, I do opposite.
On paper, we should not be even in the same room together.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, gentlemen, it works out really well.
I'm so happy about the podcast. I'm so excited about the book.
Thanks for making time for us tonight.
-Thank you, man. [ Cheers and applause ]
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